


In Sickness and In Health

by doctorbuffypotterlock79



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Hospital, Hurt/Comfort, Lesbian AU, Mild Angst, Sickfic, i just really like sick fics okay, mild medical stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:34:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21576904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorbuffypotterlock79/pseuds/doctorbuffypotterlock79
Summary: Brooke gets sick and ends up in the hospital. Luckily Vanessa is there to keep her together.
Relationships: Brooke Lynn Hytes/Vanessa Vanjie Mateo
Comments: 12
Kudos: 50





	In Sickness and In Health

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a little sick fic I’ve had in progress and decided to finish to work through some writer’s block and hopefully get some writing inspiration. It’s fluffy with some mild angst, and I hope you enjoy! Please leave feedback if you’d like, it always means a lot to me! Thank you Writ for betaing and all your encouragement!
> 
> *There is hospitalization and mild medical talk. It’s not graphic, but do be cautious.*

Vanessa wakes when the sun slips through the curtains, rolling over to bury her face in Brooke’s neck. For two years now she’s been waking up next to Brooke and each morning still feels like that first one, body bursting with tenderness and love Vanessa knew she’d have forever, even after just one night. 

“Saturday morning pancake time!” Vanessa nudges Brooke’s side and she winces, covering it up with a loud groan.

“What’s wrong?” Vanessa’s trying not to worry, but Brooke hadn’t hidden that pain as well as she thought, and she just can’t help it. 

“I’m just not really hungry for pancakes,” Brooke says quietly. 

“You didn’t eat lunch or dinner yesterday either,” Vanessa adds, trying to keep the worry out of her voice. 

“My stomach’s a little off, I guess.”

“Is there anything you are hungry for?” she tries.

“Toast, maybe?”

Vanessa leads Brooke out of bed and seats her at the table, setting a plate of toast in front of her a few minutes later. She watches with intense eyes as Brooke takes two bites and sips at a glass of water. 

“I’m fine. You don’t need to watch me like I’m a baby,” she insists when she sees Vanessa staring. Brooke hates to be fussed over, and Vanessa tries to be more discreet the rest of the day, as she keeps her eye on Brooke, watching her act less and less like herself. They go to the farmer’s market and Brooke doesn’t eat the strawberries right out of the container like she always does, her normally graceful walk slow and hunched slightly, and has nothing but a cup of tea for lunch even though it’s her favorite cafe.

She shoots Nina a text with Brooke’s symptoms, needing someone reasonable. Nina is a fellow kindergarten teacher and one of Vanessa’s best friends at work, and she commands Vanessa and Brooke to come over for dinner once a month because she loves them so much. The reply makes her legs quiver: _My niece had something similar. Ended up being her appendix. If she’s still sick Monday, you might want to get her to a doctor. Though I know that’ll be hard with how stubborn Brooke is._

By the time she checks Brooke for a fever that night, the worry is like a block of cement in her chest. 

“You feel kinda warm,” Vanessa says as Brooke bats her hand away from her forehead. 

“I’m fine.”

Vanessa sighs. “Brooke, you haven’t eaten in two days and your stomach still hurts. You been wincing all day, don’t think I can’t see it. And I’m pretty sure you have a fever. If you’re not better by Monday, you’re going to the hospital, and I don’t want to hear a single argument, Mary.”

Brooke holds up her hands in surrender. “Okay. But I’m not sick. It’s just a little stomach ache. I’m sure I’ll be fine by tomorrow.”

\---

It’s just past 6am Sunday morning when the sound of someone throwing up wakes Vanessa from her sleep, and she rushes to the bathroom, Brooke kneeling on the floor by the toilet. 

“Brooke, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she groans, flushing the toilet. “Nothing in me to throw up, really.”

Vanessa hands her a cup of water and sits on the floor next to her, stroking Brooke’s long hair. Brooke’s skin is always fair but she’s white as a sheet now, with purple circling her eyes. She’s going to the hospital, no matter what Vanessa has to do to get her there. 

Brooke swishes the water around and spits back in the toilet rather than the sink, and Vanessa thinks it’s because she’s too weak to stand. 

“Your stomach still hurts?”

“It’s not that bad.” 

Brooke is still denying it, but it doesn’t escape Vanessa that she’s gone from _‘I’m fine’_ to _‘It’s not that bad’_. That’s about as close to an admission of illness that she’ll get from Brooke, and Vanessa rests a hand on her forehead again. It’s not burning hot but it’s warmer than last night, and her hand comes back sticky with sweat. Brooke hasn’t even swatted at her, another sign of how sick she must be.

“You’re warmer now, I think,” Vanessa says gently. “You’ve been like this since Friday and I don’t think you’re getting any better. Will you let me take you to the ER? Please?”

“Okay.” Brooke caves softly, and Vanessa worries more than ever as she speeds to the hospital. 

—-

The next few hours are a whirlwind. They spend about 15 minutes with a doctor in one of the exam rooms before Brooke is admitted with a likely case of appendicitis and set up in a hospital bed, nurses in and out drawing blood samples, placing thermometers in her mouth, inserting an IV in her arm, sometimes taking Brooke away for more tests. The doctor orders some sort of scan and a nurse tells Brooke to drink two jumbo Styrofoam cups of something that Brooke grumbles tastes like chalk, grimacing with each sip.

Vanessa just sits in the hard plastic chair next to Brooke’s bed, giving her encouraging smiles that aren’t working. All Vanessa can do is watch as Brooke flinches each time her IV gets caught, her hand clutching at her side when she moves wrong. It must suck to be in that bed but it sucks just as much to be in the chair next to it, watching Brooke suffer and being unable to do a thing to help her. Vanessa would take her place in an instant. 

She’s trying to stay calm for Brooke’s sake, but her wife looking so small and fragile in a hospital bed is one of the scariest things Vanessa’s ever seen in her life. Brooke never gets sick. She hasn’t had anything worse than a cold in the two years they’ve been married, and hated every second of them; hated having people fuss over her and act like she was weak. Vanessa, on the other hand, caught every virus known to the world from her kindergarteners and didn’t mind having Brooke cover her in blankets and make her soup. Vanessa’s never been the caretaker before, and she’s not sure how much longer she can keep this up.

“It’s _freezing_ in here,” Brooke complains, pulling the blanket up high over her thin hospital gown, grimacing as it tugs on her IV. 

It _is_ cold in the room, cold enough that Vanessa can’t just blame it on Brooke’s fever. 

“Here.” She takes off her coat and lays it on top of Brooke’s shivering body, met with immediate protests that she shuts down just as fast. 

“How did I even get sick in the first place? I shouldn’t _be_ sick. Do you think I did something to my appendix? What if--”

Leave it to Brooke to blame herself for being in the hospital. “Brooke, you didn’t do anything. Something like this is totally beyond your control, there’s nothing you could have done to cause it,” Vanessa soothes. “And besides, we don’t even know for sure that’s what it is.”

“Well, based on Google, I’m pretty convinced, but if I had my phone back--”

“You’re not getting it back.”

“ _Please_? I’m so _bored_.” Brooke whines, her pout so pitiful Vanessa almost caves. But the whole reason she took it is so Brooke can’t type her symptoms into WebMD and convince herself she’s dying, and Vanessa holds firm even though it physically pains her. 

“How much longer am I gonna be stuck here?” Brooke taps her fingers impatiently on the bed rail.

It’s not even 10am yet, but it feels like they’ve been through an entire day, with no idea of how much longer this will go on. Brooke is restless in the bed, wringing her hands, flicking through TV channels and not watching a single one, fiddling with her hospital bracelet. She keeps touching the empty space on her ring finger, the ring currently in Vanessa’s purse since it had to be removed for the scan. She’d give it back to Brooke to comfort her and maybe help her relax a little, but what’s the point? It’d probably have to come off again eventually, and she doesn’t think anything could relax her wife right now. Brooke is color-coded schedules and careful planning, her days laid out in detail, from meetings at work to shopping trips and dinner dates with Vanessa. She likes preparation, knowing exactly how her day will go. Being trapped in a hospital bed, not knowing how long she’ll be stuck there, how long until a nurse gets her for another test or tells her what’s wrong, must be one of the worst things in the world for her. 

“I know, baby, but we just gotta wait.”

Brooke heaves a loud sigh, followed by a wince. “I don’t want to be here! I hate this! I hate this stupid bed and I can’t even move without this stupid IV digging in my arm and I had to drink a gallon of fucking melted chalk for that CT scan and they still won’t even say what’s wrong with me and my stomach _hurts_ , Ness.”

The outburst scares her just as much as it breaks her heart. Vanessa has noticed Brooke slowly losing her grip over the past three hours, but it doesn’t mean she’s any more prepared when she finally crumbles. Brooke has always been her rock, keeping them focused with her schedules, doing the grocery shopping when Vanessa forgets, taking the day off work just to help Vanessa decorate her classroom every year. It was Brooke who Vanessa would cling to when she was stressed and having a shitty day, Brooke who would give her a massage and listen to her rants. Even during Brooke’s times of insecurity where she was up all night stressing over case notes, worrying that she wasn’t good enough, she’s never fallen apart quite like this, and Vanessa knows she’ll have to weather the storm to keep Brooke whole. 

She loosens the deathgrip Brooke has on the railing and rubs her thumb over the back of Brooke’s hand in soothing circles. “It’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna get through this together, okay?” 

Brooke gives a weak nod. 

“Why didn’t you say the pain got worse?”

Brooke just shrugs. “Didn’t want to bother anyone.”

Oh, fuck her Canadian politeness. Vanessa takes a breath. “Okay, first of all, you’re not bothering anyone. You gotta say when you need something. Now how about I call the nurse and have her bring you some more painkillers?”

Brooke nods again. 

A minute later a nurse injects something in Brooke’s IV, saying that the test results should be coming soon, and Brooke’s shoulders lose some of their tightness, the pinched lines that had taken over her features smoothing out. She keeps frowning at her missing wedding ring, but she does nod along as Vanessa talks to distract her, telling her stories about what the kids in her class got up to last week. Brooke even manages a smile that is erased the second the doctor walks in. 

The doctor is talking, telling them it’s appendicitis and they have Brooke scheduled for surgery in an hour; the surgery is some laparoscope-something mumbo-jumbo, it’s minimally invasive and the recovery is so quick Brooke can probably go home tomorrow. 

Vanessa’s trying to listen, she really is, but the second the word _surgery_ comes out Brooke’s face falls, and Vanessa can see the wheels spinning in Brooke’s mind as she spirals. 

The doctor says the nurses and the surgeon will be in soon to go over some information, and then she leaves, Brooke’s breaths turning to shallow pants. 

“Brooke--” Vanessa begins.

“I don’t _want_ surgery,” Brooke huffs. 

“Br--”

“Ness, please, I just wanna go home.” Her voice is small, barely more than a whisper, and Vanessa would rip her out of the bed and take her home right this second if she didn’t know Brooke needed to be in the hospital. 

_She’s scared_ , Vanessa realizes as her heart shatters. For all the cool confidence Brooke projects at her law firm, all the men she makes quiver with a single glance, Brooke’s never been sick like this, never even been hospitalized before. Vanessa squeezes her hand, trying to find the right words to soothe Brooke and keep her together. She’s talked several kindergarteners down from temper tantrums in her day, and while she knows Brooke would protest at being compared to a five-year-old, the calming process is roughly the same. 

“I know you wanna go home, honey, I know. But you need to stay here and have the surgery to make you feel better, okay? And then once you’re better, we’ll go home and we can lay on the couch and watch anything you want. Even them scary-ass murder shows.”

Brooke bites her lip, and Vanessa thinks it worked, but then more comes pouring out of Brooke as she lifts her head up from the bed. 

“But what if something goes wrong, what if it’s more serious than they think and they can’t fix it, what if-”

“Shh,” she whispers, stroking Brooke’s hair with her other hand. “You’re gonna be fine. They do this shit like a hundred times a day. It’s no big deal. The doctor said it’s quick and you can probably go home tomorrow. It’s gonna be okay.”

Brooke bites her lip and Vanessa thinks she might protest, but her eyes search Vanessa’s, see the love reflected there, and Brooke settles back against the pillows. “Okay.”

Vanessa climbs up into Brooke’s bed, turning on her side, careful to avoid her abdomen. “I ain’t giving you your phone, but how about we watch cat videos on mine?”

Brooke smiles in agreement. The two of them are still huddled together, watching a cat play the piano, when nurses arrive to take Brooke down for the surgery. 

“Ness,” she pleads, hand flailing around, breaths coming in quick pants, as the nurses start moving the bed. 

Vanessa’s starting to worry too despite how relaxed she’s been for the past four hours, and she digs for the last ounces of calm within her. 

She takes Brooke’s hand and squeezes it tight. “You’re okay, Brooke. You’re gonna be fine. It’s gonna be over really quick, and I’ll be here when you wake up.”

“Promise?” Brooke asks nervously.

“I promise.” She twirls her pinky around Brooke’s larger one, bending down to kiss Brooke’s forehead. 

The nurses take Brooke away, speaking calmly to her as they move down the hall, one staying behind to take Vanessa to the waiting room, where she finally, finally, loses her calm. 

She paces back and forth across the waiting room rug so fast she makes herself dizzy. Her phone buzzes with a text from Nina, who Vanessa has been updating the past few hours. 

_Brooke will be fine. She’s tough as nails. Try to stay calm. Don’t forget to drink and eat something too_. 

She knows Nina is right, that she doesn’t need to worry about Brooke. Brooke has made her way to the top of her law firm over men who constantly wanted to bring her down, has spoken at meetings where she was the only woman in the room. Brooke told Vanessa she once did a dance performance with a broken toe as a teenager. She has no doubt in her mind Brooke will come out of this just fine and recover even faster than expected. She knows it’s a routine procedure, that there’s probably nothing to worry about. 

But still. 

How can she sit down and relax or eat anything when Brooke is behind those doors, all alone in a sea of scrubs and monitors, having her skin cut open? 

Vanessa sits down in another uncomfortable chair because she might start crying soon. She spins her wedding band and engagement ring around her finger, thinking of how Brooke had proposed on her birthday and Vanessa was so surprised it took her a few seconds to throw herself at Brooke and say yes. 

She wants Brooke back _now_. Neither of them did well when they were apart. Vanessa had gone to a teachers’ conference last year and was unable to sleep in her plush hotel bed that was just too empty, coming home to see Brooke with deep bags beneath bloodshot eyes as she admitted that she couldn’t sleep without Vanessa kicking her in the middle of the night. 

She checks the time. It’s only been 15 minutes. The doctor said the surgery would take about an hour and then they’d bring Brooke to the recovery room for the anesthesia to wear off before Vanessa could see her. Vanessa hates that she won’t be there when Brooke first wakes up, but the doctor said Brooke would be very sleepy and disoriented and might not even remember the recovery room. 

She gets another text from Nina suggesting that she visit the gift shop to keep herself busy, and that’s what she does. It better be well-stocked, because Vanessa is a stress shopper and she could clean the bitch out right now. 

She strides past bags of chips and candy and cookies, knowing Brooke won’t be able to eat for a while. She finds bright sunflowers and lilies and grabs a stuffed whale with _Get Whale Soon_ printed on its back, which should make Brooke smile at least. 

She stashes her bags on a chair and resumes her pacing, minutes ticking by like sludge until she hears a doctor call her name. 

“Everything went well. She’s okay.” 

Vanessa hears those words and can’t really pay attention to the rest, body ready to run to wherever Brooke is, to see her with her own eyes and know she’s okay.

“Can I see her?” she blurts, not caring about her rudeness. 

The doctor smiles, probably used to people ruder than her. “We’re moving her into her room now, and then a nurse will take you to see her. She’s asleep right now; she’ll probably be in and out for another couple hours and she’ll be a little groggy. We’d like to keep her overnight for observation, but there were no complications and she should be able to go home tomorrow.”

The relief is overwhelming, and Vanessa has to grab at her chest to stay standing. _She’s okay. Brooke is okay_. The thoughts are on loop as the nurse takes her to Brooke’s room, leaving with instructions to call if they need anything. 

All she needs right now is Brooke, every ounce of Vanessa’s focus trained on her wife. Brooke is pale, almost as pale as the sheets, and she looks so small, not like Vanessa’s entire body can fit against her. But her face is peaceful as she sleeps and Vanessa is grateful she’s at least not in any pain. 

She arranges a florist’s worth of flowers on the window and rests the whale against Brooke’s leg, avoiding her abdomen. The doctor said they made three small incisions and sealed them with sutures that dissolve on their own, which sounds like some sci-fi shit to Vanessa. The rise of Brooke’s chest is soft and steady and Vanessa finds herself matching it, all her fears from the past hours melting away. _She’s okay. Brooke is okay_. 

She settles into another hard chair and waits. 

—-

“N-Ness?” Brooke’s voice is hoarse and foggy and it’s the best thing Vanessa’s heard in hours. 

“I’m here.” 

Brooke is trying to turn her head but not getting anywhere, and Vanessa stands up so Brooke can see her. 

“Good.” Brooke’s glassy eyes slide shut and she takes a deep breath before forcing them back open, like she’s afraid Vanessa will disappear if they close too long. 

“You can go back to sleep, baby. I’ll still be here.”

“‘Kay.”

Brooke is asleep seconds later.

—-

“Ness?” Brooke’s voice is a bit clearer, a bit stronger this time. 

“I’m here, honey. Do you feel okay?”

“Mmm. You’re here.”

Brooke’s right hand is moving, or trying to anyway, the motion wobbly and slow. A frustrated wrinkle forms between her eyebrows. It’s adorable, but Vanessa reaches down to take Brooke’s hand so she doesn’t get too upset. 

“I’m here. I promised, didn’t I?”

“I love you.” Vanessa’s not sure if it’s just her or the leftover anesthesia mixed with painkillers, but Brooke’s eyes are clearer than before and she’ll never tire of Brooke saying she loves her. 

“I love you too, baby.” She reaches down near Brooke’s leg and pulls up the gift resting there. “I got you a whale.”

“I love it,” Brooke gasps, mouth falling open, and Vanessa releases her hand so Brooke can hold it, her fingers clumsily stroking the whale’s head. 

“Thank you for staying,” Brooke says.

“Of course, baby. I’m always gonna stay with you.”

She leans down to kiss Brooke, and she knows the words will always be true.


End file.
